


The Life We Choose

by thegreatstoryteller



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Family, Family Feels, Loss of Parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 14:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18100625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatstoryteller/pseuds/thegreatstoryteller
Summary: Jack wondered for a long time if he'd ever see his family again, or the gang. Part of him feels the loss, but another understands his new life was an unexpected gift.AU: Where Jack is never rescued and grows up with Angelo Bronte.





	The Life We Choose

It had been years since Jack had first arrived in Saint Denis. Years since his life with Papa Bronte had begun, his father in all rights but blood. The time before he arrived to live in this mansion…..was foggy in his mind. Some parts he saw clear as day….but others seemed more like dreams than memories.

He remembered his mother’s face clear as day. His father’s face had worn down, but the distinguishing features were still there. Others....he remembered names, but not the faces that accompanied them: Sadie, Charles, Arthur, Dutch. He shouldn’t be surprised. He was only a boy when the Braithwaite woman took him and sold him to Papa Bronte. He counted his blessing that Bronte had taken a liking to him, instead of shipping him off to some mining camp.

No, instead, he’d taken a young and inexperienced boy under his wing and reintroduced him to the world as his son.

Jack transitioned with ease to the fine parties and galas. The silken sheets in his expansive bedroom, his private bathroom, the finely tailored clothing. It was like living in a storybook. All of the stories he’d read while huddled in the tent with his mother came to life before him. It…..It almost made him forget what was missing.

Papa Bronte did his best to make Jack forget, whether that was for Jack’s own good or Bronte’s…..Jack didn’t like to think about. He preferred to believe it was done out of the goodness of Bronte’s heart, but he’d known the man long enough to doubt the validity of such a statement. Sure, the man cared for him, but not in the way his birth father would have.

Jack shook his head and willed away the thoughts threatening to cripple him. He focused more on where he was in this moment. Leaning against a lamppost in Saint Denis just outside the marketplace. He pulled the hat on his head lower to shade his eyes. Not from the sun, but from two familiar faces across the street.

They were sitting at the head of a wagon. Arguing. Fifteen years, but nothing had changed. Although he thought again, something had. A little girl stood in the back of the wagon, on her tiptoes leaning against the backside of their seat, trying to get her parents to stop fighting. She was about the age he had been when he’d been taken away.

What are they doing in Saint Denis? Jack was curious, but not enough to get anywhere near the family. His family, a part of his mind whispers urgently. The foolish, sentimental side that is quickly quieted. They were in his past, and that was where they needed to stay. Jack had plans, and Papa Bronte would be disappointed to watch Jack throw away those carefully laid arrangements.

His father was entirely gray, Jack noticed...and his mother wasn’t far off. The young girl he assumed was his sister had the same midnight black hair their mother had once had. The argument ended and his father hopped off the wagon, helping his mother and sister down after him.

They walked toward him, and Jack pulled his hat lower. The haunting sound of their voices came within earshot, and they walked past him without a glance in his direction. His sister bounced happily on the balls of her feet, tugging on their father’s leg.

Jack turned to look after them, but they disappeared into the sprawl of the marketplace and out of sight. He felt….uncertain. For a moment he seemed almost hopeful, but for what he wasn’t sure. He knew part of him longed to return to his family and what they once shared,.....but the time for reconciliation had long passed. He could only look forward to the future.

One day, not far off he imagined, he would inherit all that Papa Bronte had to offer him. Jack would marry a fine well-classed woman and they would have a few children. Jack would be what Angelo Bronto was before him, and he would never see his previous family again.

This was the way it needed to be. Not because of Papa Bronte’s insistent, he was far from a prisoner. Jack in his opinion had been given far too much freedom over his life. Which only showed the trust bestowed upon him by his benefactor.

This was the life he was gifted. Wealth and an unexpected adoptive family. Personally, he preferred it to hiding out as the only child in a gang lead by a psychopath silver-tongued serpent. Here he had safety and a better future prospect than a gun-slinging outlaw.

Jack shook his head again and nudged his hat up. This life may have been thrust upon him as a child, but now he choose it for himself. Jack pushed away from the lamppost and walked out into the city, back toward the mansion he called home.


End file.
